Meet Fran Marion

Fran Marion is one of the leading voices for "Stand Up Kansas City, part of the Fight for $15 movement that aims raise the minimum wage across the U.S." She is a Black woman, 37 years old, a mother of two, a fast food worker for 22 years, and homeless.

She currently works at a short-staffed Popeyes, where, during one recent shift, she processed nearly 200 orders, "roughly one every two minutes. Those orders grossed about $950 for the company. Marion went home with $76."

While she stays with friends and her children stay with other friends, two bus rides away, she works and works — and she advocates with Stand Up Kansas City for higher wages for fast food workers.

And she bristles at the suggestion she just get a different job.

Marion says the argument that fast food workers should leave for other, better paid, jobs misses the point. People like fast food. The companies that make it make fortunes. "We are the foot soldiers for these billion-dollar companies. We are the ones doing the work and bringing the money," she says.

"At the top of America, when it comes to Trump and them, their goal is to keep us down," she says. "Between these billion-dollar companies and Trump, it's a power trip."

They can afford to pay more and, she believes, eventually they will. "We are still coming. No war has been won over night and we are not giving up."

More than that, she likes working in fast food. "I love it. I'm good at it. Just like Martin Luther King said, 'If you are going to be a road sweeper, be the best damn sweeper there is'," she says. "I don't know. It's just this society is all messed up."

I am very glad that Marion made this point. Her work has dignity. She provides a service people enjoy. She's good at it.

She shouldn't have to find another job. She should be paid a liveable wage for the job she already has.